Corporate Control and the Financial System in Germany: Recent Changes in the Role of Banks

The present paper aims to analyze the major changes in the German system of cross-holdings between banks and industrial or financial companies. After an overview on the role of banks in bank-based versus market-based financial systems, and on the German system of corporate control, we focus our attention on the relationship not only between banks and industrial companies, but also between financial companies in Germany. Discussing the reasons for cross-holdings within the financial sector, we hypothesize that cross-holdings are less efficient than full mergers. We analyze hypotheses about the structure of the "Deutschland AG" and about a different role of cross-holdings at different levels of the German financial system. A test of hypotheses on recent mergers and acquisitions in the German financial system yields that they explain some of the changes in the cross-holdings occurred after 1994. We conclude that instead of the often referred "Macht der Banken" the German financial system is characterized by an increasing importance of insurance companies.

European ALMA operations: the interaction with and support to the users

The Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) is one of the largest and most complicated observatories ever built. Constructing and operating an observatory at high altitude (5000m) in a cost effective and safe manner, with minimal effect on the environment creates interesting challenges. Since the array will have to adapt quickly to prevailing weather conditions, ALMA will be operated exclusively in service mode. By the time of full science operations, the fundamental ALMA data product shall be calibrated, deconvolved data cubes and images, but raw data and data reduction software will be made available to users as well. User support is provided by the ALMA Regional Centres (ARCs) located in Europe, North America and Japan. These ARCs constitute the interface between the user community and the ALMA observatory in Chile. For European users the European ARC is being set up as a cluster of nodes located throughout Europe, with the main centre at the ESO Headquarters in Garching. The main centre serves as the access portal and in synergy with the distributed network of ARC nodes, the main aim of the ARC is to optimize the ALMA science output and to fully exploit this unique and powerful facility. The aim of this article is to introduce the process of proposing for observing time, subsequent execution of the observations, obtaining and processing of the data in the ALMA epoch. The complete end-to-end process of the ALMA data flow from the proposal submission to the data delivery is described.Comment: 7 pages, three figure

1.25 mm Observations of a Complete Sample of IRAS Galaxies: (II) Dust Properties

We present 1.25 mm continuum data for a southern galaxy sample selected from the IRAS PSC and complete to S_60=2 Jy. Two thirds of the galaxies have been detected and significant limits on the remaining objects have been set. We find, on a statistical basis, indications that the dust emission in these galaxies is somewhat more centrally concentrated than that of the optical light, possibly tracing a higher metal content in the inner galactic regions. This result also allows to estimate the aperture corrections to the millimetric data. The latter, together with IRAS photometric data, have been used to compare the broad-band FIR/mm spectra with a simple dust model. According to their far-IR/mm spectrum, the sample galaxies show a dichothomy: almost half of the objects, those displaying bright 25-60um fluxes ascribed to warm dust residing in 'starburst' regions, are characterized by higher values of the bolometric (optical + FIR) luminosity, of the dust-to-gas mass ratio, of the dust optical depths and of the overall extinction. A complementary class of objects dominated by cold dust ('cirrus') shows opposite trends. Because of the favourable observational setup, selection wavelength and completeness, we believe these data provide an exhaustive and unbiased view of dust properties in spiral galaxies.Comment: 9 pg Latex file (using mn.sty) gzip'd tar'd file including 7 ps figures and 3 tables. to appear in MNRA

Relationship Finance by Banks and Non-Bank Institutional Investors: A Review within the Theory of the Firm

In continental Europe, banks are more and more replaced by non-bank institutional investors in the financing and control of firms. This must not imply a shift to arm's length finance, if these institutional investors develop relationships with firms similar to the traditional longterm bank-firm relationship. The present paper differentiates between relationship banking and relationship investing within the theory of the firm and compares the financial and corporate control services provided by both arrangementsrelationship banking, relationship investing, banks, institutional investors, corporate governance, theory of the firm